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Robert Spencer's Talk at the Wednesday Morning Club

A leading scholar of Islam explains why the more one looks for Muhammad, the less of him one finds.

If Islamists keep a list of people they never wish to see or hear from again, then Robert Spencer's name must be high up on it. In his talk about his new book, "Did Muhammad Exist?" given at David Horowitz's Wednesday Morning Club on May 16th, Spencer said that he was interested in the health of honest discourse in America, for nobody is ever accused of being a racist, a bigot or a hate-monger about inquiries into the existence of Jesus or the truth of Judaism. Spencer already knows the answer to his question about the health of honest discourse. Since the publication of two of his other books, "The Truth About Muhammad" and "The Politically Incorrect Guide To Islam," the so-called "religion of peace" has been so peaceful in its intentions towards him that he now finds it necessary to live in a secure and undisclosed location.

The more one looks for Muhammad the less of him one finds, asserted Spencer. Although Muhammad is alleged to have lived from 570 A.D. to 632 A.D., and his thirty or so conversations with the archangel Gabriel started around 610 A.D., no mention is made of him for more than another seventy years. By 690 A.D. the Muslim conquerors of the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, and India never referred to him in any way when they might well have been expected to do so, since Islam today claims he had already become their sole object of veneration by that time. Surely the vanquished would have noted how a new religion had come to conquer in the name of Muhammad and the teachings of the Quran. Again, there is only silence.

There is also doubt about the exact meaning of inscriptions inside the Dome of the Rock completed in 691 A.D. It is unclear whether the inscription predated the Quran or vice-versa or whether the inscriptions are actually referring to Jesus. But one thing is certain, noted Spencer: by that time the specifics of Islam had nowhere been elaborated, although there was the beginning of an effort to question the divinity of Jesus.

By the early 700s the Persian and Byzantine empires had exhausted themselves fighting each other and, as each was subsequently defeated by a united Arab army, a political structure was required as a unifying and stabilizing force to fill the vacuum. This was the genesis of the theo-political supremacist ideology with an unrelenting hostility towards non-believers known as Islam, which would help the Muslim empire expand and grow ever stronger. The religious aspect of it all, which appealed to the superstitious, the illiterate and those who pinned their hopes on paradise beyond the grave, was grafted on much later and to great effect.

Only 125 to 200 years after his supposed death, noted Spencer, did the first biography of Muhammed appear and then almost miraculously an abundance of records -- about someone little known in the world -- appear detailing his every thought, word and deed with excruciating minutia and with his behavior served up as a supreme example of conduct to be admired and imitated.

It has been said that while there may be moderate Muslims there is no such thing as moderate Islam. Spencer made the case that the so-called "extremist" voice of Islam is its true voice and that Islamic terrorists are merely executing the commands contained in the Quran, which is their ultimate justification for every move they make and every violent act they commit. No wonder then that they become apoplectic when Spencer's research seriously questions the actual existence of the very person whose life and actions they seek to emulate. Not even Islamic terrorists like to think they've been wasting their time.

In life there are really only two ways to be fooled. Either you believe things that are not true or you refuse to believe things that are true. Robert Spencer's new book gives the public some of the tools to avoid the former. With any luck, it will go far in preventing people from falling in the latter category as well.